This week we talk about BYD, Tesla, and the Blade Battery 2.0.

We also discuss EVs, internal-combustion engines, and autonomous vehicles.

Recommended Book: Blank Space by W. David Marx

Transcript

Petroleum-powered vehicles, cars and trucks and SUVs of the kind that have become the standard since the mid-20th century, work by mixing fuel that you put in the tank when you fill up at the gas station with air, in the engine, and then creating a controlled explosion—in modern vehicles using what’s called a four-stroke combustion cycle of intake, compression, combustion, then exhaust—in order to move pistons which, in turn generate mechanical power by transferring that movement to the vehicle’s wheels.

An electric vehicle, in contrast, functions by using electricity from a battery pack to power an electric motor. So rather than needing fuel to combust, which then moves pistons which then moves the wheels, EVs are a straighter-shot with less conversion of energy necessary, electricity powering the motor which powers the wheels.

That simpler setup comes with many advantages, and that difference in the conversion of energy is a big one. Because most of the energy injected into the EV’s system is converted into mechanical movement for the wheels, this type of vehicle only loses about 11% of the energy you put into it to that conversion of electricity to mechanical energy process—around 31-35% is initially lost while charging, converting electricity to motion, and so on, but about 22% is recaptured by the vehicle’s brakes during operation, leading to that 11% average loss.

A gas-powered vehicle, in contrast, because of the inefficiencies inherent in converting fuel to combustion to movement, loses somewhere between 75-84% of the energy you put into it at the gas station, much of that loss in the form of heat that is emitted as a result of that conversion process; this is an inevitable consequence of the thermodynamics of burning fuel to create motion, and one that means operating a gas-powered vehicle is inherently lossier, in the sense that you can’t help but lose the majority of what you put into it as waste, compared to an electric vehicle, which is less lossy to begin with, but even more efficient when you include that in-operation energy recovery.

That baseline reality of energy usage means that modern electric vehicles will typically be cheaper to fuel, to power, because it requires less energy input to get the same amount of travel. This cost-benefit comparison shifts even further in favor of EVs when gas prices are high, though, and though currently the cost of EVs tend to be higher than gas-powered vehicles in most countries, EVs also offer substantially lower lifetime maintenance costs—an average of 40% lower than gas-powered vehicles, due largely to the dramatically reduced number of moving parts in EVs, and the lack of regular, recurring engine-related maintenance tasks, like oil changes and replacing spark plugs.

Not even considering the externalities-related savings of owning and operating an EV, then, like the environmental costs of fuel emissions, such vehicles can save owners tens of thousands of dollars in costs over the span of their ownership—though gas-powered vehicles are still more popular in most markets in part because they’re just more common on car lots, their infrastructure—gas stations versus charging stations—are also more common, and because there are numerous convenience issues, like it being quite a bit faster to pump a tank full of gas than to charge EVs, which is more efficient, but also a piece-of-mind sort of benefit.

What I’d like to talk about today are some recent innovations in the EV and especially EV-scale battery space, and what it might mean for this market in the coming years.

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After a relatively boom-y period in which EV sales saw a significant uptick, that uptick the consequence of friendly policies and subsidies from successive federal administrations and the rapid-fire innovations arriving in each new generation of EV model being pumped out by US makers, especially Tesla, the US car industry has in recent years pulled back from electric vehicles substantially—the most recent evidence of this being Honda’s recent announcement that three EV models they were planning to manufacture in the US will no longer see production.

This was mostly a money decision, the raw and partially manufactured components necessary for US-based car companies to produce EVs are now burdened with new, Trump-era tariffs, that make producing finished products of this kind in the US all but impossible; simply too expensive to make.

This is also an acknowledgment, though, that Chinese EVs have just gotten so good and so inexpensive for what you get, that it’s simply not possible to compete, not within the current economic and regulatory climate, but also not in the immediate future, even lacking those tariffs, because of how much of a lead Chinese car companies have earned for themselves in this space.

New impositions by the second Trump administration, including those tariffs, but also the killing of EV incentives, and a recent decision to cease enforcing emissions and fuel economy standards, basically telling the industry to make vehicles that pollute more, if they like, have absolutely influenced this state of affairs.

But the quality of new Chinese EVs, the speed at which a large quantity of them can be produced, and the affordability of these vehicles is simply too much for even the world’s most otherwise competitive and industry-owning companies, the most renowned car brands, to match.

There are a few serious EV players in other parts of Asia, and some US companies, like Lucid Motors, are still trying to carve out a space for themselves, pivoting toward skateboard-style platforms that will allow them to use fewer scarce products, like expensive wiring, by using essentially the same base for all of their models, allowing them to ramp-up efficiencies of scale faster, and Rivian, which is trying to claim the outdoorsy, Jeep-esque facet of the US EV market; and Tesla of course continues to own a lot of mindshare in this industry, despite seeming to be pivoting toward AI, autonomous vehicles, and political concerns in recent years.

But this is increasingly China’s domain, and that dominance is the result of a multi-decade push to own basically all the infrastructure and technologies required to electrify their economy, from the ground-up.

As a consequence of that dominance, and all the renewables and battery-making facilities and investments in the relevant companies made by the government for the past few decades, we’re now seeing impressive technological feats coming out of China, like the recently successfully test-flown Sky Dragon electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, which looks something like a drone combined with a helicopter, and which can reportedly carry either 10 passengers or a ton of cargo up to 155 miles, which is about 250 kilometers, on a single charge, taking off and landing from helipads, so no runway necessary.

But the already on-the-market, everyday applications of this tech are arguably even more impressive, considering that car-markers in other countries cannot accomplish anywhere near the same, and maybe won’t be able to do so for years.

Chinese carmaker BYD is the top entrant in this space right now, in China and globally, by many metrics, and in early March of 2026 they announced a new battery, called the Blade Battery 2.0, which allows the vehicles it powers to be driven more than 621 miles on a single charge.

That’s compared to the around 400 mile range most large-tanked gas-powered cars can claim. Though even as batteries have gotten larger and more efficient, in terms of their energy storage and expenditure, charging them up has still taken quite a bit longer than filling a tank with gas, often requiring a wait of 30 minutes, though that’s usually just for a small top-up, and only if you have access to a fast-charger. A full-charge sometimes requires as much as 24 hours, if you’re using a small, non-fast public or a home charger.

This differs quite a lot depending where in the world you are, the nature of your EV, and the capacity of the charger you’re using. In general, Tesla superchargers can take a Tesla’s battery from 20% to 89% in around 15-30 minutes, which on average provides another 200 miles of travel; topping it up to 100% usually takes about an hour.

This new battery from BYD, though, which has that 621 mile capacity, can be charged from 10% to 80% in just 6 and a half minutes—and that’s not theory, that exact feat was shown in a public, onstage demonstration.

This isn’t a claim about a technology that will soon arrive, in other words, this is a technology that’s already here, for BYD vehicles, at least. And at six and a half minutes for around 300 miles of range, that brings EVs into the same convenience range as gas vehicles, just a minute or so longer than the average stop at a gas station.

This of course will require specialized charging stations, and those stations will take a while to roll out. The company has said they’ll have 15,000 of their so-called megawatt charging stations available across China by the end of 2026, building 4000 of them, themselves, and the rest through joint ventures. They’re also planning to have about 3000 of these chargers built across European by the end of the year.

All of which will likely further reinforce and lock-in BYD’s advantages over its local and foreign competition, at least for the next several years.

Now, it’s worth mentioning that China’s ’s EV industry is currently a bit tumultuous, the stock prices of companies like BYD tumbling due ...